Shackles
by Nacata
Summary: AU "And deliver us, oh lord, from every evil. Amen." They were trapped there, in the halls they'd run down, the classrooms they'd slept in, the dormitories they'd gossiped in. They weren't kidding when they said that school was a prison. A/F R/Hr Ha/G
1. Blood: Draco Malfoy

Title: Shackles

Author: Nacata

Summary: They were trapped there: all of them. In the halls they used to run down, the classrooms they used to sleep in, the dormitories they used to gossip in. They were shackled to the sole place that had ever provided them safety. They weren't kidding when they said school was a prison. AU

Chapter 1: Blood (Draco Malfoy)

Rating: T for heavy language, mildly descriptive gore, frequent sexual situations and heavy violence. (Rating subject to change?)

Shipping: Well, wouldn't you like to know?

Disclaimer: Obviously I don't own Harry Potter. If I did, you would've seen some remarkable changes in the seventh book. The Weasley Twins may not have made an appearance due to the fact that they'd be tied up in my closet. Cedric Diggory too.

Author's Note: I'm back. Again. After another extended absence. This story I fully intend to follow through with and complete at some (hopefully not-too-distant) point in the future! I'm looking for a Beta, as well as anyone who would like to discuss plot, character development, and future possibilities for the story. If I start to slack where updates are concerned, you all have full permission to harass the hell out of me. My profile has contact information for anyone willing to whip me back into shape. :

* * *

The moonlight filtered through the fragile castle window and in its fluorescence he saw himself transformed, like his goody-two-shoes werewolf teacher, like the vampire his mother claimed to have spotted in Italy, like Angelina Johnson these past few months, like the very school itself. As the dark hallways twisted and groaned, morphing, stretching, his body accommodated. As the days got longer, as the sun grew thinner, so he accumulated three inches and became sickeningly gaunt. As the stones felt harder so the angles of his face sharpened and solidified. As the smell of death stained the tapestries, the door handles, every crook, every cranny, ever corner of the castle, so it nestled permanently into his skin.

"_Scourgify_," He was near hysterics in the shower, his wand out and pointed at his thin, papery arm. "_Scourgify__. Scourgify, scourgify, scourgify_." He lifted his wrist again to his nose but death's perfume was strong, musky, overwhelming. He felt dizzy and resisted the urge to turn and wretch into the toilet so close to the shower. The scalding water pounded his flesh, soothing his spine but proving unable in the damnable end to purge his moony limbs of the stench that lingered there.

His hair smelled like an entire bottle of shampoo now, and his skin singed from the multitude of charms he had invested in, hoping one would clean him of the blood seeping through his pores. He'd heard about people dying of lack of blood, but he wondered if it was possible to bleed to death in a different manner. Could one acquire too much blood?

It seemed he was ready to burst with it. It crawled in beneath his skin and settled in his veins, mixing with his own DNA until he could feel their pain nearly as strong as his own. He could taste their fear metallic and sharp in his mouth, could smell their life-wine pouring in thick heavy puddles onto the floors they'd once pranced across with school books and big, bright, innocent eyes.

Some of them, anyway. He had never been pure, even as a child. He was tainted at an early age and he had accepted that fate, that terrible, hell-bound fate of his, and he did not complain about it. He would act as was expected of him, and they would act as was expected of them and that was why Slytherins and Gryffindors couldn't be friends. History was a powerful overlord, and it was determined that they would remain separate entities, existing in parallel worlds of widely different scopes.

He was ready to implode with all the blood running rampant through his veins, making the corner of his lips twitch as he pulled on the dark pants, the dark blouse, the dark cloak and then settled the dark magic of his wand into his pocket. With so much black around him, his face seemed translucent beneath its hood, his eyes glowing a steely gray under thick blonde lashes. His lips, pale and thin, were set in the usual sneer as he traipsed down, down, down, spiraled down, down, down, fell down, down, down the many changing staircases until he was at last in the Potions dungeons, watching his old classmates from the other side of iron bars, new, but rusted already with red stains he tried heartily to ignore.

--

"Oh." The mudblood's voice was hard. "It's just you."

"Delighted to see you too," He muttered, staring straight ahead at the wall between the two cages Montague had installed just weeks ago.

"You're a dirty coward, Malfoy."

"Shut it, Weasel." His eyes hardened beneath the cloak, his face still set straight ahead by sheer willpower. "If you want to discuss personal hygiene, take a look at the dump you live in and the rats that infest it with you."

"Oh! I didn't know you had a rat problem, Ronald. Would you like me to bring some Scillywigs over? They're excellent rodent-hunters…"

"He was talking about my family, Luna," Weasley hissed low between his teeth.

"…Hm. I didn't know humans could have rat-blood in them. Was it your mother or your father's side that did the inter-breeding?"

"Shhh." The final voice was deep, smooth, velvety. He smiled serenely over at Lovegood, and the only disruption in the comfort of that grin was the burn scalding his left jawline. "Go back to sleep, Luna." Dean Thomas settled back into the confines of the cage he shared with Weasley, his head tilted upward, his eyes closed peacefully. Across the room, Lovegood shied away from Granger enough to allow them both ample room for sleep, curling herself into a contented little ball on her side.

To Draco's utter dismay, however, she simply lay there, watching him, a dreamy smile interrupted by the matted blood covering the roots of her silky hair and a fourth of her passive face. He reminded himself that he hadn't spilled hers—that Crabbe or Goyle or Dolohov or someone else entirely was the sorry Death Eater who had to taste her pain and smell her discomfort. "You heard him," He breathed sharply, unable even still to stand there with her watching him like that. "Sleep, Looney." She giggled, an odd, chime-like little sound that made his ears rattle and his head ache in wake of her voice.

"When you do get some rest, Draco, pleasant dreams."

She couldn't see because she'd closed her eyes now, but a bitter smile dangerously paralleling hysteria tugged upward at his lip and he fought the ball of laughter and sobs spun together, creeping lethally up his throat. Pleasant dreams? He couldn't remember a time when he'd had those to begin with. It was why he took the night shift.

--

"Malfoy, you're done." The voice was a twisted joke some deity was imposing upon him as he pushed himself up off the wall, tugged his hood away and walked blank-faced back up the stairs descending into the hell formerly known as his Potions classroom. He was on vacation. He was not done. He would never be done so far as he could see until he became fed up with it all and decided to pitch himself from the astronomy tower or else piss off another Death Eater enough to earn himself a tempting Avada Kedavra. Perhaps those words would sound sweeter when directed at him. Perhaps not. He wouldn't be sure until the time came for him to leave one filthy hell behind and advance to the next.

Something hard and wonderfully jolting stirred him from his reverie and he scowled despite his silent gratitude until he realized who was standing before him. The sweeping black hair, the sly smirk, the arch of a single dark eyebrow and the copper hand resting on his pale elbow gave Montague away. "Oi. Malfoy, you look a bit dazed. They giving you trouble downstairs?" His voice betrayed an odd mix of amusement and threat. Beside him, his spouse looked as impassive and uncaring as Draco himself. For a moment the two statue-esque prisoners locked eyes, shackled to one another by a sort of understanding that this was what had to be done, that this was the only way to survive. Then Angelina Johnson looked away and Draco turned his eyes back on his fellow Slytherin.

"No," He replied quietly, the haunted lilt of his voice causing even his own eyebrows to rise in momentary disorientation. "They slept through the night." Seeing the odd edge of both suspicion and fear creeping into the older boy's gaze, Draco continued, "I was surprised. Figured you lot would've come down to continue their proper welcoming."

"You've been welcoming them for the past three weeks."

Montague raised his other eyebrow at the snide tone of voice his companion had taken, giving her a hard look which she ignored with a reminiscent bout of Gryffindor pride—stupidity seemed more the appropriate word to Draco. "We had other things to attend to." A superior smirk tainted his lips upward at the corners and he looked down at Draco, a single inch separating their gazes. "Would you have been able to handle it anyhow, Malfoy? You 'ave a rather weak stomach for their screams, it appears."

All the blood running rampant beneath Draco's flesh froze in its place, time standing still for a solitary second before the life-liquid pumped hard and fast and painful through his veins again. Scowling in an appropriately convincing manner, he turned his nose upward and retorted sharply, "On the contrary. I just find the silence of their submission much more satisfying." He squared his jaw, challenging his opponent with an arch of his own eyebrow. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought Johnson might look mildly intrigued.

Montague at last nodded, surrendering his temporary power over Draco's mood. "Angelina, run along to breakfast." She wasted no time in evacuating from their cruel presences, her chin stuck out stubbornly, the green satin of her dress billowing slightly as she turned the corner. Montague's eyes followed her for a split second, then returned to the platinum blonde before him. "Listen, Draco…" He winced at the sound of his own first name. "I know you're reliable. You were a bloody brilliant Seeker. Give you a job n' you'll do it. But there's been…talk. Suspicion. Not everyone is as sold on the Dark Lord's faith in you as I am. They wouldn't dare cross you in front of him, but do remember that he spends the majority of his time up in his chambers. He doesn't see everything that goes on down here in these halls and you'd do best to watch yourself. After your slip up with Dumbledore, you can't afford to look soft, eh? They'll think you're hesitant about all of this. That maybe you…" He studied Draco a bit closer for his reaction now, "actually _care_ about what happens to the mudblood scum." When Draco opened his mouth to protest indignantly, Montague held up a single hand. "Look. I'm not accusing you of anything, alright? I'm behind you. If the Dark Lord says you'll come through, then you'll come through, eh?

"But the fact remains that you look like hell these days. You walk around like a bloody zombie—actually, in all honesty, a zombie would be an improvement on your mannerisms. And you're thinner than some of the _prisoners_. N' you spend a ridiculous amount of time alone, and it's unsettling some of the other blokes. It…seems like you're frightened. Like you might chicken out again, they say."

Draco scoffed, rolling his eyes with feigned nonchalance. "Don't get your knickers in a twist. For Merlin's sake, Montague—they're just being little pansies. Flint and Percy always did have a remarkable flamboyancy about them. If we hadn't shared a locker room playing Quidditch together, I'd stake a few galleons that they weren't blokes at all. As it is, I'll have to settle on queers." He angled his nose up just a bit higher and turned on his heel, starting back towards the dormitories, no longer hungry for breakfast.

Montague, left in his wake, smirked at his disappearing figure. Though his voice was low, Draco managed to catch a faint, "That's more like it. Thought we'd lost you for a while. Glad t' have you back." Draco smirked in a twisted manner similar to the one Lovegood had earned from him earlier. The oblivious. Did they really think it so simple to snap back like that when he'd been wandering for years now? How easy life seemed to them. –Was for them. And he envied them that. They, as sick as it was, were happy here.

* * *

Author's Note: And there's your first chapter! Chapter Two will feature a different character—we'll have a wide scope of viewpoints throughout this, I think. Any requests who to hear next? I've got chapters for Hermione and Angelina started, but suggest away and perhaps my muse will cooperate with you. I'd love to hear what you think so far. Constructive criticism is highly encouraged. Now see that pretty purple button? Press it, please.


	2. Bones: Hermione Granger

Title: Shackles

Author: Nacata

Summary: They were trapped there: all of them. In the halls they used to run down, the classrooms they used to sleep in, the dormitories they used to gossip in. They were shackled to the sole place that had ever provided them safety. They weren't kidding when they said school was a prison. AU

Chapter 2: Bones (Hermione Granger)

Rating: T for heavy language, mildly descriptive gore, frequent sexual situations and heavy violence. (Rating subject to change?)

Shipping: Still tentative.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Yet. Just you wait, Rowling…when you least expect it…I'll be there.

Author's Note: And onto the next chapter! Which was…written about two hours after the first. Aren't you all proud of me? I'm actually being fairly efficient! Yay Nicole! Thanks to anyone who reviewed. It's much appreciated. (: This would be Hermione's chapter. It's my first attempt at writing anything from her point of view.

* * *

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

But it wasn't the best of times, it was just the worst of times, and Hermione Granger would appreciate it if Charles Dickens would cut the crap because we all know he got paid by the word anyway so the only reason his novels were so goddamn long was because he had to put bread on the table and she imagined that whatever other jobs he clearly wasn't working weren't paying for his meals. Stupid fucking artists and their stupid fucking starvation. There were other people starving too, didn't they know? Other people who hadn't chosen such a lifestyle: other people who were born into it.

Hermione hadn't been born directly into it, but her present predicament was a consequent of her birth, she supposed. Not that she was unwishing her existence or something terribly cliché like that. She didn't want any ghosts of Christmas Past or Present or Future creeping up into her cell to disturb her in the middle of the night—to take her away. There were people that needed her here, and she had ghosts of her own to deal with.

Like Luna.

Like Neville.

Like Dean.

Like…Ron.

If any of Scrooge's ghoulish guides tried abducting her in the middle of the night, she was going to have to pull out some of the self-defense moves she'd learned in that silly (but surprisingly useful) class her mother had enrolled her in. Really now, when would she need to know how to outrun or physically harm a predator when she had her wand at her disposal?

--

Well, the answer appeared to be now.

Now, as Crabbe kicked her curtly in the ribs, sending her sprawling across the cold stone floor where she could smell the decay of life itself, the stones thirsty for her blood. The castle was out to get her. Was closing in on her. Shit, she couldn't breathe—

Now she could breathe. Great, big, staggering breaths. But she had to force them, had to remind her lungs to expand, to allow oxygen in and out, savoring the taste of the air, even as dank and as stale as it was. If she couldn't taste it, she was dead. That was her constant test. No air meant no life, it was simple science really. Simple science like the physics of Goyle's foot on her hair. She should've known better than to move, but flinch she did, struggling to get away as panic kicked in and made logic useless, her fingers scraping at the floor, shoving her form as far from Goyle as she could get but all this managed to do was burn her scalp, as his foot did not lift and her hair did not budge. She stifled a sob, giving them only the satisfaction of a quiet grunt.

"Stop it!" She could hear Ron's voice faintly, but he seemed farther than sensibility told her he was. Their cages were what—a mere fifteen feet apart? No, eighteen feet, she thought, her vision blurring as she glanced towards where he was clawing at the air just beyond his prison bars. "Get offa' her! You're hurting her! Shit, Hermione, you're bleeding." Her vision blurred again and she faltered backward from her knees, the air embracing her, pulling her down to the stone floor, bolting her there with a throbbing pain spreading quickly through her limbs.

She turned her head just slightly to see Ron's face, pained, flushed, beautiful. Something slammed down hard on her palm and she gasped, arching her back, her head falling limply so that her hair plummeted beneath her, pooling on the floor. Tears stung at her eyes, making the blackness that handicapped her vision grow fuzzy and hot. The object on her hand, a foot, she realized, pes in latin—no, more specifically it was the calcaneus. Crabbe's calcaneus (in simpler terms: his heel) was pressing down hard on her palm, the pressure perhaps enough to snap her delicate bones. Let's see—Crabbe was roughly…what? Two hundredweights? No, three. (He'd been digesting a great amount more than he used to, mostly, she assumed, to flaunt the fact that he could eat whatever and whenever he liked to the prisoners beneath him.) Three hundredweights of pressure on her tiny hand. Now the stone floor could either act as a messiah or her Achilles heel. Achilles calcaneus. If her hand was angled wrong, if there was too much room between her bones and the stone floor, then the impact of his foot might doom her. But if she kept her hand just perfectly still, pressed down against the stone rather than up against his foot, she might achieve minimum damage of her—

_Fuck_.

Theory aborted.

He'd definitely just broken something. Perhaps a bone or two or all five in her metacarpus. (That would be her palm.) Perhaps a finger as well. And certainly her wrist if she dared to push her hand upward to release his hold on her.

"Hermione!" Ron's voice was nearly drowned out by a terribly frightening something else, which she didn't recognize as her own screams until she saw the tears of frustration building at the edges of his eyes. "Get offa' her! Get _off_!" He had lunged, as if to pitch himself through the bars but they caught on the muscles of his arms, too big to fit through. She almost wished him back to his lanky teenage self. The pressure on her hand disappeared and she rolled onto her side, pushing herself up with her one good wrist to shake her head wildly.

"No, no, no! Ron, you imbecile!" She was shrieking at him still as Goyle hauled her back to the cage she shared with Luna, where the girl was watching them wide-eyed but silent. She heard the door of her own cage slam shut and she knew whom they were after now. She tucked her head between her knees and held her wounded hand against her chest, the other palm pressed against her ear, trying to block out the sounds of Ron's silence.

Silence was lethal. They wanted to hear screams. She controlled her shoulders, willing them not to shake with her sobs as she listened to the heavy sounds of fists and bone, toes and bone, heels and bone. Then there was silence, and her head snapped up, knowing already where Crabbe's hand was headed, expecting it when he pulled out his wand.

"Ron!" She scolded, looking at his limp form on the ground, her voice rising shrilly. "Scream, you bloody idiot! Scream!" They kicked him onto his side so he could face her and he flashed her a weak smile, lip curling under the bruise forming beneath his left eye. Crabbe pointed his wand directly at Ron's back, smirking.

"_Crucio_."

Once the curse left his lips, there was silence again. Just the occasional sound of Ron twitching on the ground, thrashing, some part of him connecting with the cold floor. Hermione, in her desperation, curled back into the familiarity of science, naming each of his body parts as they struck the floor loudest.

Patella.

Tibia.

Ulna.

Radius.

Scapula.

Mandible.

Cranium.

--

Hermione studied the shape of his shoulders, his spine, his legs as Dean gently propped him against the iron bars, keeping him from choking on his own blood as it dribbled downward from his nose, over his lips, across his throat and pooled at the collar of his shirt, staining the white t-shirt crimson along the edges. "Is he still breathing normally?" She called over tentatively, clutching at the bars of her cage with her one good hand, the other still cradled at her chest, stuck in an odd angle she cringed to look down at. Dean nodded calmly and Hermione fidgeted, unable to grasp how her friend could be so very soothed when just the other day she'd watched Dolohov try to burn part of his face off. It had taken a full twelve hours (that was her estimate, considering the guards' shifts) for him to calm back down after that, Luna humming to him across the room, watching him serenely and making lulling sounds until he was dragged back into his usual passivity by her dreamy smile.

Ron coughed suddenly and stirred before slumping again, his head rolling to the side, resting uncomfortably against his shoulder. Hermione tensed until he was still again, watching his chest rise and fall in perfect rhythm, able to distinguish his figure even in the dark classroom. "What the hell do they want from us?" She asked the silence finally, burying her head again between her knees. Luna's fingers drummed the cage bars, her bones clinking with hollow, haunting beats against the iron.

Turning her eyes brightly on Hermione, she smiled that serene little smile and patted the girl's hand comfortingly—her good hand, that was. "Shh. Harry will be here soon and then all of this will be over. You'll see."

Hermione didn't imagine that she would.

She'd be dead by the time Harry came back, if he ever came back at all. If he were dead, Hermione imagined that the Dark Lord would've made it very clear—would've brought his body in and hung it high in the Great Hall for all to see, all except herself, Luna, Ron and Dean. They were not allowed upstairs for meals; it was solitary confinement of a deeper degree, for they were not alone. Instead, they were blessed with the good fortune of watching one another suffer, hearing one another crying, knowing that one of them had to die first, but always uncertain of who it would be. Once or twice, Hermione had had the selfishness to pray that it would be her.

As there was, Harry's body had made no appearance and so there was hope. And that was dangerous, especially to the Dark Lord. She had heard rumors…whispers of uprisings forming in the castle halls, in the classrooms, perhaps even amongst some of his own followers. Not all of the guards were Death Eaters, and perhaps that had been his mistake. In his eagerness to hurt, to shred, he had forced blood-traitors into the halls as security. They knew better than to lash out, they understood where that would land them, but they did not help prisoners either, and Hermione could not decide if she was disgusted with them, or impressed by their smarts.

Oliver Wood. Seamus Finnegan. Cormac McLaggen—these were people she had spent years upon years fighting beside. Now they stood exactly where they always had: next to her, but the same intentions did not flank their bones as the ones that did hers. They were skeletons of their former selves. Very smart skeletons, for choosing their battles so wisely, for staying alive, but was nobility or survival the right priority here? Was she angry at them for betraying her? For refusing to help her? Or was she satisfied that they weren't dead? That they hadn't done anything brave and bold and utterly stupid like Ron tended to do?

It didn't matter. They'd all probably be dead come the end of this anyway…bones littering the castle floors, skeletons on parade. It was inevitable. That was what everyone came back to: bones. Matter. Nothing more.

--

When she dreamed, she dreamed of her skeleton rising from the animalistic cage it was imprisoned in, slipping through the confines, moving to the other cage. She imagined her bones dancing with Ron's bones as the survivors of the war came down to look at them, sobbing over the loss. The contrast of the happy waltz she and Ron were spinning only made the picture feel surreal and logical to her: all matter must have an opposite. Negative, positive. Bones, flesh. Sadness, happiness. It was how the world negated itself, how it equalized. When the balance was tipped, chaos emerged. Chaos like the world she would awake to in a few short hours when a new shift of guards came down to taunt them.

She was starkly aware that she was dreaming, but she couldn't pull herself from it. As horrific as it was, as macabre, as grotesque, as twisted, she was happier there in the dream than she was in the waking world. With her flesh gone, her soul gone, her life gone, her skeleton looked carefree and weightless as it glided with Ron's. How she knew it was his, she couldn't say—no red hair, no freckles, no sulky pout, the absence of these distinguishing characteristics made it difficult to know it was him, and yet know she did. Their bones twirled, their pace increasing until a gust of wind swept the room, shattering them into heaps of jumbled body parts on the floor, her bones mixing with his, impossible to tell who was who anymore.

When she awoke, she awoke to the perfect stillness of their former classroom and pressed her forehead hard against her kneecap, biting her lip until it drew blood, blood, glorious, red, lively blood. It wasn't bones, at least. That was something to celebrate.

"Hermione?" Ron's voice wafted from across the room and she scrambled on her knees to the bars, scraping her skin in the process, drawing more blood, more beautiful blood.

"Yes?" She held her breath, her eyes adjusting slowly to the distance and the darkness. Darkness tolerable. Distance manageable. Darkness + Distance painful. She couldn't see him, couldn't feel him, and when at last her eyes were able to identify the very bare essentials of his form, she was unpleased with what she saw.

Bones.

Bones, protruding from a break in the skin covering his knee, bent odd, misshapen, wretched. She turned away and put the fingers of her good hand to her mouth, closing her eyes for just a second of solace before she opened them again. "Ron, your knee…"

"Eh. I can't feel it," He replied, his voice a comfort in the thick blackness. Outside she heard someone clear their throat and she knew instantly that it was Seamus Finnegan on duty, guarding outside the room, unable to come in and face them. "I can't feel a lot right now, actually. Maybe that whole emotional range of a teaspoon thing is a blessing, eh?" He laughed weakly, then coughed again. Hermione tasted her blood in her mouth as she sunk her teeth down harder.

"Doesn't anything hurt at all?" She whispered.

Ron hesitated. "…Er, no."

Wrong answer. Panic was pressing in on her, drowning her, filling her lungs with heavy rushing water and making it difficult to--

"Breathe, Hermione!" That was it. That was the word. She sucked in a steadying breath and refocused her eyes.

"Ron, I think you're going into shock."

"I'm going into shock? You're bloody mad. You're the one that was about to pass out from lack of oxygen."

"No, I mean, you can't feel any pain. You're going into shock."

Ron paused, chuckled, shifted and drew a sharp gasp. "Oi. I was only telling you that because I figured it was what you wanted to hear. Of course it hurts somewhere. Shit, my left arm feels like it's covered in little needles."

Hermione relaxed, even if he couldn't see the tension seep from her muscles. "Oh. Right. Sorry."

"Don't apologize. You were just looking out for me." Silence entombed them again. "Hermione?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks for that. Looking out for me, I mean."

"—That reminds me." Another second of silence, then:

"'EY! What the hell was that for?!"

Hermione's left shoe had by some inexplicable event, made its way across the room and nearly caught Ron in the right shoulder, if not for the fact that she hadn't angled it right and the bars deflected the blow, landing the footwear an arm's length from Ron and Dean's cage.

"You idiot! What were you thinking!? They were nearly done with me, you just should've let them finish! Then they would've left for dinner and you wouldn't have gotten your arse kicked. And then, to top it all off, can you accept their play like normal people? Oooh, no. Merlin forbid that you Weasley men know how to take a blow. You have to go all thick and masculine on us. All they wanted was for you to scream, Ron. If you'd just bloody screamed, it wouldn't have been over quicker and we wouldn't have had to listen to, or not listen to, or shit, I don't—"

"Breathe," Ron reminded her again and she sucked in another deep lungful of hair. She hadn't realized how close she was to another panic attack, the tears streaming thinly down her face. Ron stared at her from across the room, having trouble seeing her with the clarity she seemed to see him. "…It's alright," He murmured finally, listening to the fading of her hiccups and sobs.

"No, no, it's not alright. We're going to die, Ron. We're going to die…"

"Shh. 'Mione. Harry will come back for us, alright?"

"He doesn't even know we're here! No one's around to tell him!"

"Last we checked, nobody had brought Gin or Neville in yet. We've still got a chance."

"We're going to die," She repeated, shoulders shaking with alarming fragility. "We're going to die." Ron became still and quiet, unwilling to fight her, perhaps too weak to continue arguing. She rocked back and forth, trying to soothe herself, reminding herself consistently to keep breathing, keep breathing. He had too much bloody hope. It was dangerous, all that faith in something that might never happen. He was dangerous. Or endangered. Or both.

"You'll see, Hermione, you'll see."

No, she wouldn't. None of them would. They were going to die, and that was that.

* * *

Author's Note: And we're onto Chapter Three. Purple button me?


	3. Breath: Angelina Johnson

Title: Shackles

Author: Nacata

Summary: They were trapped there: all of them. In the halls they used to run down, the classrooms they used to sleep in, the dormitories they used to gossip in. They were shackled to the sole place that had ever provided them safety. They weren't kidding when they said school was a prison. AU

Chapter 3: Breath (Angelina Johnson)

Rating: T for heavy language, mildly descriptive gore, frequent sexual situations and heavy violence. (Rating subject to change?)

Shipping: A heavy Angelina/Fred fic, with some sprinkling of Ron/Hermione, Harry/Ginny, and possibly a little Dean/Luna.

Disclaimer: Nope. Still not mine. I did get a wand and a timer-turner for Christmas, though!

Author's Note: No, I didn't spend months writing this chapter. I spent months being lazy and preoccupied. Hehe. But, lo and behold, here it is. Enjoy.

* * *

In, out.

In, out.

In, out.

Their hips were dancing, were fighting, were crashing and burning and yet she had never felt so frigid in her life. An imperceptible frost coated her body, cosseting her from any warmth she might've sipped from this experience. To the naked eye, it appeared to be sweat, this light sheen covering her, filming her beautiful bronze skin from head to toe, but she knew better. It was her cocoon; it was her coat of armor to keep her safe from her lover's heavy breath, his heavy body, her heavy heart.

In, out.

In, out.

In. In. In. In.

She bit down on her tongue and turned her head away. He was breaking the rhythm. He was out of sync. Off his hinge. This wasn't right. It had never been right to begin with but it had been smart and thus bearable when it had begun. Now he was dancing off-beat and she had no pattern to weave herself into, no routine to wrap around her sweat-frost-cocoon body. She had stopped breathing, only able to suck in, in, in, in as he drove his hips against hers. She felt dizzy. Lightheaded. His face swam out of focus and just barely, just briefly, she was able to grasp a solitary euphoric moment. He froze and she froze and the world was still and quiet and utterly lovely.

And then she felt his warmth flooding her and she realized that he had found the chink in her protective shield and penetrated it, attacked it, ravaged it, butchered it. He had spilled heat into her. Had warmed her, though only for an instance.

For allowing and accepting his heat, she could've curled up in herself and died of shame. She did not want his warmth. She did not want his soft, pliable flesh or his taught, sturdy sinews. She wanted to fall into a field of ginger hair and a sea of freckles. Not this horrid, inky grave that Alexander Montague was digging for her.

He rolled off of her and she turned onto her side, staring straight ahead at the wall and clutching the sheets tighter around herself. A lump rose in her throat and she stomped on it, forcing it back to the depths from which it fled. _Focus_, she reminded herself, and lacerated the rhythm of his breathing as it resumed its normal pace, crawling inside of it and zipping herself up to ride out another painful night.

In, out.

In, out.

In, out.

When she was certain that he slept, she picked herself up gingerly from the bed—_ginger_ly, hah—and she placed one slender copper foot on the floor, then the other, gliding to the closet with impressive stealth and slipping into a pair of black silken pants and an emerald green robe. She tied it tightly at her waist and glanced backward over her shoulder at her sleeping husband. When again she had convinced herself that he would not awaken, she stood on her tiptoes and retrieved a pretty jewelry box from the top shelf. She felt beneath the wooden plank holding it up until she had located a small silver key which she inserted into the lock and turned carefully clockwise. The lid sprang open and she reached inside, her arm able to extend far past where physics would permit thanks to a little charm Oliver had performed for her. Down her fingers tunneled, beneath mountains of tampons and feminine napkins and other such estrogen-inspired products that she knew her spouse to be too squeamish to so much as look at. And then her slender digits wrapped around a thin satin shoulder strap and she extracted a palm-sized drawstring pouch.

Swiftly and soundlessly, she returned everything to its rightful place, save the drawstring pouch, and exited the room. She pulled from the bag a tiny coin, looked it over once, twice, and then set off. Her bare feet barely touched the floor as she picked her way down the steps of the Slytherin dormitory, through the Common Room, and in and out, in and out, in and out of Hogwarts' corridors to the stairs leading upward to the Entrance hall. She stopped only shortly when she recognized the sound of Hermione Granger's pitiful sobbing. And then, without so much as flinching, she glided up to the main level of Hogwarts, then another flight of stairs and down two more passages. At last she spotted the statuette of her friend, standing like stone against the wall beside the old Muggle Studies classroom.

"Yer late." His voice barely carried, the volume lost to the vastness of the castle or the thick stones of the walls, or perhaps simply to his own fear of discovery. Angelina didn't have to so much as utter a word. She merely approached him, her face flushed, her lips swollen, several strands of hair falling out of the sole braid down her back, and he knew what had kept her.

"Who have you got for me tonight?" She asked instead.

At this, her marble structure finally turned human, sweeping his head to look down at her pityingly. "Flint gashed up Bell's leg pretty bad. Y' ought t' take a gander at that. She looks like she's got a fever off it, too." The slight lilt of his accent and his towering figure were familiarities to her and Angelina burrowed into them. Only Oliver Wood could continue to call his players by their last names half a decade after they had ceased to be a team.

Angelina nodded and went to move past him but he put a burly arm out to stop her. "—Johnson, there's someone y' won't want t' see in there."

Though dread hit her cold and fast, she stood her ground. "What makes you think she's got a fever?

Oliver's face slackened and he turned fully to face her, his fingers curling at his side. "She's bloody delirious, Angelina. Flint and Percy and Goyle were placin' bets on 'ow long it'd take 'er t' hack. They figure they'll be burnin' 'er body by the end of the week." He glanced over his shoulder though both knew that nobody was there. Lowering his voice another notch, he murmured, "Put a marker on 'er if y' think she'll live. Otherwise just put 'er out of 'er misery."

The words, brutal as they were, compelled the former Gryffindor (she was certain her housemates had informally excommunicated her) to push past the guard to the door. "You know the drill. Knock twice if you hear trouble coming. Three times if it's getting late. And I'll knock twice when I'm ready to leave. Hopefully this'll be quick and I'll be in and out." Oliver pointed his wand at the lock, muttered an incantation beneath his breath and acknowledged the soft click of release. She yanked the door open, and then shut behind her. A split-second later she found the only source of light in the room and her heart dropped through her stomach, down three stories and impaled itself upon the post of her and Montague's bed.

Pretty, petite Katie Bell was huddled in the right corner of the room, blood and what looked possibly like pus oozing from a long gash on her leg, dirt and bruises and half-healed scars decorating her expanse of porcelain skin. Her breathing was irregular and now and then her voice rose softly in the chamber, drifting over the other sleeping inhabitants scattering the floor between her and Angelina. Her head lolled to the side where it rested on the very tense shoulder of Frederick Weasley. An enchanted candle in his hand provided the luminosity allowing Angelina to see them, though judging by the panic etched into his features, the light did not extend far enough for him to see her.

"Who's there?" He murmured darkly. His voice was as rich as it ever had been. If sound had color, his words would be amber and she imagined they would taste sweet and feel warm. She did not answer him right away, standing back to marvel at him, granting herself this one reprieve after so many months of ignoring the incessant urges to find him, to check up on him, to sit beside him and stroke the back of his hand and tuck herself under his chin and cry. "I know you're in here. I saw you open the door." He shifted, pulling Katie in closer to his chest, ready to defend her should the need arise. Angelina watched the ripple in the muscle of his arm, the strain of his neck as he leaned forward to identify her, the way his clothes clung to the dirt and blood crusting on his freckled form.

"Johnson goes in for the kill," Katie announced softly, her voice picking up the old rhythmic pattern of Lee Jordan when he had reigned over the Quidditch commentary booth. Her eyes were glazed and slightly unfocused but she seemed to be staring right at Angelina with a clarity most often inspired by madness. Slowly, weighted down by sharp, metallic panic, the Chaser-turned-mediwitch picked her way through the sleeping bodies of her once-schoolmates.

In, out. In, out. In, out. She braided her steps through their tiny hands and legs and torsos until she stood just outside of the light of Fred's measly candle. "She shoots," She announced tentatively, toeing into the circle of visibility. "And she scores." She stood, painted in candlelight and shadows as the two prisoners looked up at her. Katie drifted in and out of consciousness, recognition kindling in her gaze and then dying before she could speak on it. Fred simply stared, his face still sharp and angry.

"Finally decided to pay your old mates a visit, then?" He was all hostility and horror now; she could read it in the lines around his mouth.

Discouraged but not yet disabled, Angelina accepted the mockery gracefully. In his mind, she deserved it. "Yes. A lovely little place you've got here. How much is rent?" She barely recognized the softened state of her voice, the submission and exhaustion riding up and down her words.

"About an ounce of blood a day."

"An arm and a leg literally, then?" She tried to smile but he found no humor in her meek attempts at jokes. He had always been the funny one between them.

"Why are you here?"

Irritation tugged at the corner of her abdomen, seeping into her muscles, crawling upward through the jungle of her innards to sink into her voice. She choked it back for now. "Wood called for me. Said Katie was looking pretty bad. Thought I ought to take a look at her."

A smirk crossed Fred's lips but it was cruel and unforgiving. "Come to finish her off then? The men in black sent you to tie up their dirty work? Will you be cleaning up her remains too, or is Filch still running the janitorial duties of this fine institution?"

Angelina felt the little bug of agitation scrambling upward again and she narrowed her eyes at him. Her lips parted, the feelers of the bug's legs pushing her mouth open and struggling to burst free. But before the insect could fulfill its duties, Katie's voice danced through the silence again.

"Ange," She chimed softly, her head angled upward, a deeper concentration penetrating her facial features. "Fred, it's Ange." She shook his arm weakly. "I knew she'd come for us. I told you. Didn't I tell you? And you thought I was being naïve." She giggled softly, a low sound beneath her breath and then winced, shifting.

"Sit still," Angelina commanded gently, stooping to her knees and untying her pouch. She saw Fred stiffen again but she ignored him, putting all of her attention on finding the right tools. Her arm was elbow-deep in the bag (again, thanks to Oliver's talent with charms) before she found what she was looking for and tugged out a pair of scissors, a needle, some medical thread, some cotton swabs, gauze, rubbing alcohol and a little flask of translucent liquid. She set them down, put a hand to Katie's head and frowned. "Merlin, Kates. You're burning up."

"Figures that I'd look best when Lee isn't around to see it," Katie pouted.

Shifting her attention, cool and business-like now, Angelina addressed Fred brusquely. "How often is she coherent?"

Fred pursed his lips tightly initially, but at last gave in. "About ten minutes every hour. Gin n' I take turns watching her in the night."

"Aw hell, I'm sitting right here. Don't talk about me like I'm not in the room. As much as you lot liked to baby me in Hogwarts, I'm not a child anymore." Katie crossed her arms over her chest, though her limbs slackened a moment later. "Is this going to hurt, Angie?"

"Yes." Angelina didn't skip a beat. "But not at first. I'll clean it before I patch it up." She swabbed a cotton ball with the alcohol and placed it against the cut, cleaning along the perimeters before slowly inching inward. Throughout it all, she was silent and Fred was terse, leaving Katie to smile feebly and weather the stiff awkwardness hanging between the two. Angelina glanced at her friend's near-babyish face and turned to lace the thread through the needle. When she looked back, Katie had zoned again.

"Hold her hand," Angelina instructed.

Fred ignored her orders. "You quite enjoy causing us all misery, don't you? Is this some sadistic little mind game you're playing at? Is that it? Are you trying to pull one over on us?" This time he permitted himself a short bark of a laugh, but it was merciless. "You're messing with the _king_ of pranks, Johnson. You're in over your head here."

Leveling her eyes with him, she repeated through gritted teeth, "Hold. Her. Hand." He stared at her stubbornly and she blew out an exasperated breath, muttering, "Fine. Be an arse." Her movements succinct with frustration, she knotted the end of the thread, sterilized the tip of the needle once more as a precaution, and jerked the tip through the end of Katie's scar. The girl arched her spine, threw back her head and gasped in pain, but for her part, she made no verbal sound. Fred's eyes widened and he snatched her tiny hand in his, using his free fingers to stroke her hair from her face, murmuring indeterminably to her.

In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out.

The needle punctured the flesh, she pulled the thread through. The needle punctured the flesh, she pulled the thread through. The needle punctured the flesh, she—oh, Merlin's left ball, Katie's skin was so _soft._ Angelina stopped, putting a hand to her mouth as a dry heave threatened to rack her body. Fred looked up at her, startled, and she closed her eyes and willed the tastes, the sounds, the smells away. Forcing her lids open, she immersed herself again in her work, in the steady rhythm of her mending.

In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out until the wound was stitched together from bottom to top.

Katie, she surmised, had gone into shock and then passed out, as her body was limp and she hung on Fred's shoulder. Silence ensued as copper fingers unraveled a strip of gauze and the former Quidditch Captain tore it neatly with her teeth. She wrapped her friend's leg with the fabric and thought she saw Fred's jaw drop from the corner of her eye. When the gauze touched Katie's skin, it immediately channeled the color of her flesh and camouflaged itself so that when at last the wound was draped entirely, no bandage was visible. Reaching into her makeshift medical bag one last time, she pulled out a tiny vile of red liquid and a scalpel. She made a shallow incision on the uppermost layer of fabric and then dripped the fake blood down from its container, redecorating the dressed wound so that it looked almost as severe as it had when she'd entered.

"If the guards ask, you cleaned away some of the dirt with your spit." She despised the formality of her own tone as she gathered her things and returned them to her little bag, all save for the flask of clear liquid she'd pulled out before she'd began stitching. She turned the flask over, revealing a clock which looked to be painted on except that it was keeping real time. Wetting her finger with saliva, she wound the clock up until it read forty-eight hours from the present moment, a small ticker in the right hand corner of the glass keeping track of the date. "This will buzz at exactly that time. Give it to her then."

Fred accepted the drink, but frowned up at her. "How do I know that you're not trying to poison her?"

Angelina's shoulders hunched and she closed her eyes to compose herself. The little bug had been waiting in the back of her throat ever since Katie had interrupted its escape, and it was swimming forward again. She cleared her throat and parted her lips again to calmly answer him when he arched a skeptical eyebrow at her and lifted his lips in a superior, taunting smirk.

"You are _such_ an arse sometimes."

"Well pardon me for not giving the wife of a fucking Death Eater an open armed welcome."

"Oh bloody hell, suck it up. I'm trying to help you here. Do you know how much trouble I could get in? I'm not even supposed to be doing this. This isn't the way—"

"No." Fred's voice remained a harsh whisper but the edges of his consonants, the cold divots of his vowels broke Angelina's own speech. "No. You're not supposed to be doing this." His face had gone ashen and empty and Angelina's pride dissipated in wake of something close to fear. "You're supposed to be down here. With us. With me. You're a bloody coward, Johnson. And a traitor. You've left us to _die_ while you prance about on the arm of your fairy Montague and dine on fine wine and warm food and lounge about in the Slytherin dormitories and fuck him when night closes in, and—"

In, out. In, out. In, out. She was already on her way towards the door, never glancing over her shoulder, throwing herself into the rhythm of her feet rather than allowing his words to pull at her as he meant for them to. As she reached the entrance, she broke her concentration for a sole second, just long enough to hear: "Well, well, well. Isn't that something new? You turning your back on me. What a terrible, awful surprise. Really, I'm just shattered." The venom in his voice tied tight around her foot and she stumbled, tripping over a slim feminine body placed closest to the door. Angelina turned for a moment, melded in her place by the raw hatred present in his gaze.

"Fred, what the hell is going on?" Ginny's voice jolted her back into reality and she knocked twice quickly, feeling a deep swelling in her stomach, consuming the bug in its tidal rage as it pushed upward and made to flee the dams of her lips. Oliver pushed the door open and she flung herself through the opening, tugging the wooden frame shut behind her.

"Ange—Ange, what happened?" When she turned to face him, there were angry tear tracks rolling down her cheeks.

She hit him hard in the arm and he winced as she drew a stifled breath. "Oliver Wood, don't you ever, _ever_ put me through that. I will not be talked down to by Fred fucking Weasley. Someone needs tending in there next time and you send Parvati." Her voice was shrill, even in its hushed state and she turned to flee before he could attempt to console her…though, granted, Oliver had never been very good at comforting.

The journey back down to the Slytherin Common Room was a blur of rage and regret and justification all rolled together in the heaviness of her steps. When at last she reached the stone wall embedded in her mind, she paused, placed her forehead to the stone beside the undetectable door, and whispered, barely loud enough for herself to hear, "Long live Lord Voldemort." The stone slid open with the password and she returned to her dormitory, her home now, with as much composure as she could muster. Replacing her supplies, she evaded crawling back into bed by locking herself in the bathroom.

She crossed straight to the sink, her mouth still foul with the taste of her last sentence, and cupped her hand beneath the stone snake's head beside the sink. It spat a puddle of green soap into her hand and she raised it to her mouth, licking her palm clean. She sunk to the bathroom floor and sat there for a while, the fresh taste of liquid soap staining her mouth. At last she rose to her feet and spat it out, out, out, breathing in, in, in and never once looking her reflection in the eye.

* * *

Author's Note: Ta-da! Chapter three. Yeah, yeah, I suck at updates. Apologies. I'm on break now so I'm trying to crank out a good amount of this story. I promised I would finish it, and I do mean to. Eventually. Hehe. Yes, I realize Ron and Hermione believe Ginny's still free. That will all be explained in due time. Reviews, as always, are much-appreciated. Hope everyone's having a lovely holiday season.

Up next: Ginerva Weasley.


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